


Gonna Make This Place Your Home

by eternaleponine



Series: Where There Is A Flame [12]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abuse, Deleted Scenes, Gen, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 05:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11502927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: Raven witnesses one of Anya's Tae Kwon Do students being hit by her mother.  She offers their home as refuge.Takes place in the time jump between chapters 163 and 164 ofWhere There Is A Flame.





	Gonna Make This Place Your Home

Raven was about to pull out of the parking lot after dropping off Anya when she heard shouting. Two female voices, one young, one older, and when she craned her neck around she saw a woman arguing with a teenage girl. The girl was in a Tae Kwon Do uniform (which was not a gi, but she couldn't remember the right word for it), so she must be a student. 

Her hand hovered over the gear shift, reaching to slide it into reverse, when the woman's hand came up and then crashing down again against the girl's cheek, hard enough that her head snapped to the side. Raven shoved open her door, nearly falling flat on her face as her leg caught in her haste to get out. The noise of it caught the woman's attention, and she put her finger in the girl's face and said something too quiet for Raven to catch, then stalked across the parking lot, got into a car, and peeled out. 

Raven managed to extricate herself from the tangle of her seat belt and got both of her feet on the ground. She walked over to where the girl was still standing, her head down, hair like a curtain around her face. "Hey," she said. "You okay?"

She heard a sniffle before the girl looked up, both cheeks red but only one of them bearing the imprint of a hand. Her eyes were hard, murderous. "Fuck off."

Raven held up her hands. "Okay then," she said. "Just thought I would check."

"I don't need some fucking do-gooder up in my face," the girl snarled. "I don't need your help, or anyone's help, so just fuck off!"

"You said that already," Raven told her, keeping enough distance between them that if the girl decided to lash out she at least stood a chance of being able to get out of the way.

"Well I thought maybe you were deaf since you're still standing here."

Raven swallowed a sigh. This wasn't hers to deal with. She didn't have to put up with being talked to like this, and under just about any other circumstance, she wouldn't have. But all she would see when she looked into the girl's rage-filled gray eyes was herself, roughly a decade ago. "I'm not deaf," she said. "I'm also not stupid. I know what I saw, and I know that if it happened once, it will almost certainly happen again, if it hasn't already happened before."

"Yeah well," the girl said, lifting her shoulders and letting them fall. "My own fault."

It was all Raven could do not snap back at her that it wasn't her fault, because she was the kid and her mother – she assumed the woman was her mother – was the adult, and it was her mother's responsibility to take care of her and keep her safe and treat her with respect even when she didn't feel like she was being respected. That it didn't matter what she'd said or done, nothing, _nothing_ gave her mother to right to lay a hand on her, _ever_. 

All of the things she wished someone had said to her, but hadn't. She'd done all right anyway, though, with the help of Finn's family and then on her own. If her mother could see her now... She managed not to snort. If her mother could see her now, she would probably tell her that she'd always known she was a dyke, but even if she wasn't no decent man would want her anyway.

As if her mother had any idea what a decent man was actually like. 

She forced the thoughts back; it had been a long time since she'd really thought about her mother, and she didn't particularly feel like changing that now. 

So instead of all the things she wanted to say, she asked, "Were you going up to the school? The dojo?"

"Do _jang_ ," the girl corrected, rolling her eyes. 

"Right," Raven said. "I knew that." She did, if she'd bothered to think about it for half a second. 

"Yeah right," the girl said, her eyes sliding down from Raven's face to her leg, encased in its brace. 

"I don't do it," Raven said. "My girlfriend does."

This seemed to pique the girl's interest, the anger replaced by curiosity. "Who's your girlfriend?"

"Anya," Raven said. "I just dropped her off."

It was as if a switch had been flipped, and everything leading up to that moment had been forgotten. "I know Anya," the girl said, smiling. "She's my favorite one of the older students. She's taught me a lot."

"Oh yeah?" Raven asked. "That's awesome. What's your name? Maybe she's told me about you."

"Tris," the girl said, and Raven couldn't miss the look in her eyes, the hope that flickered at the possibility that maybe Anya had mentioned her to someone outside of the school, that she was important enough to Anya that she talked about her at home, to her girlfriend. 

Raven was really, really glad that she didn't have to disappoint her. "Oh _you're_ Tris," she said. "Her li—her protegee!"

"She calls me that?" Tris asked. 

"No," Raven said. " _We_ call you that, when she talks about you. Like we call Aden Lexa's protegee. Well, Octavia calls Aden Lexa's _son_ , but that's a whole other thing." 

Tris laughed. "Well he does kind of look like her and Clarke mixed together," she said. 

"Right?" Raven grinned back at her. "Anya talks about you all the time." Which wasn't really an exaggeration, because any time Tae Kwon Do came up in conversation, Anya _did_ talk about Tris, and how much progress she'd made and how focused and determined she was, and how a lot of times working with the younger students made her crazy, but she genuinely enjoyed working with Tris, because she obviously wanted to be there and wanted to learn. She said that sure, she got goofy sometimes... but from what Raven had seen when she'd observed classes, it was often the adults who got silly first, so she couldn't really fault her.

"I should get to class," Tris said. "I don't want to be late."

"Of course," Raven said. "Have fun."

Tris waved as she made her way up the short set of steps from the parking lot to the dojang, and then disappeared around the corner. Raven watched for a few seconds more, even though she couldn't see her, then went back to the car to try to remember what it was she'd planned to do for the hour until she had to pick Anya up again. 

She got there a little early and went up to the school to see what they were working on that day. There was something satisfying about watching your girlfriend throw people around... and get thrown around. Octavia gave her a quick wave before turning her attention back to her partner, dodging out of the way before she could get hit. 

Class ended a few minutes later, and everyone came off the mat, some of them heading to the locker room and others just putting on their shoes to head out. Tris was one of the latter, and Raven edged herself into her path before she could get out the door.

"In case it ever gets to be too much," she said softly, tucking one of her business cards into the pocket of Tris' bag. She'd written her cell phone number and address on the back.

Tris looked at her, and for a second Raven though she might give the card back, or tear it up, or swear at her again. Then her eyes dropped, and she gave a quick nod and pushed open the door. 

"Good night, Tris!" Anya called after her. 

Tris looked back. "Night," she said, and then hurried away, heading up the street instead of toward the parking lot.

"Does she usually walk home?" Raven asked Anya.

"Yeah," Anya said. "She lives close."

"Okay," Raven said, but she didn't actually feel all that okay with it, because god knew what she was going home to.

Anya waited until they were in the car before she said anything more about it. "Everything okay?" she asked. 

"I just—" Raven stopped herself, narrowing her eyes. "Are you officially considered a teacher at the dojang?" she asked. 

"Officially, no," Anya asked, her eyes narrowing. "Why?"

"I don't know if the same rules apply there as they would with a regular teacher," Raven said. 

"What rules?" Anya asked. 

"About reporting if you suspect... abuse or whatever," Raven said. 

"Again, officially no, but as a decent human being—"

"Reporting things doesn't necessarily make them better," Raven said, too sharply. "You might think you're helping, but if nothing can be proven—"

Anya held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. "Why don't you tell me what this is about?" she said. "And we can figure out from there what the best course of action is."

Raven frowned, wishing she hadn't opened her mouth. But that was how these things happened, wasn't it? And how they continued to happen. When people saw something and said nothing.

"After I dropped you off, I saw Tris in the parking lot with a woman I assume was her mother, arguing. Then she hit her. Tris. The woman hit Tris."

"Fuck," Anya said. "That explains why her cheek was so red."

"Yeah. She slapped her pretty hard. After her mother left I asked her if she was okay, and she told me to fuck off, that it was her fault anyway."

"Fuck," Anya repeated. 

"Yeah." 

"Do you think we should—"

"No," Raven said. "I mean... one incident doesn't necessarily indicate a pattern. It could be an isolated thing, but... it almost never is. But I'm not sure it would get taken all that seriously if we reported it, and it might make things worse for her, if her mother thinks that she's telling people that she's being abused."

Anya closed her eyes for longer than a blink. "I'll keep an eye on her," she said. "I'll see if I notice any patterns."

"Thank you," Raven said. It was all she could really ask for, and she hoped that maybe, despite what she'd seen, despite how familiar the scene was, that she was wrong.

* * *

Weeks passed, and if Anya saw anything that might have led her to believe that something untoward was happening at home with Tris, she didn't mention it to Raven. She still talked about her on a regular basis, so it wasn't as if she was avoiding the subject. Raven let herself have a little bit of hope that maybe, somehow, things had gotten sorted out.

Then the doorbell buzzed at 10:45 on a Friday night right before the holidays, when they were already in their pajamas, curled up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and HGTV, because that was just how exciting they were sometimes. 

"Were you expecting anyone?" Anya asked. 

Raven shook her head. "Probably just someone forgot their keys and they're pressing all of the buttons to try to get someone to let them in, or hit the wrong one accidentally."

"Probably," Anya said, settling back against the couch cushions. 

But the buzzer went off again, and then a third time and a fourth, urgent, insistent. Anya got up and pressed the button for the intercom. "Who is it?" she asked.

"It's me," a voice said, garbled by the intercom to the point where neither of them recognized it. 

"Who's me?" Anya asked.

"Me! Tris!"

Anya looked back at Raven, and it was only then that she realized that she'd never actually told Anya that she'd given the girl their address. She picked up her phone, wondering if she'd missed a call or a message, but there was nothing. She'd just... shown up.

"Let her in," Raven said. "Please."

"What did you do?" Anya asked.

"After... I gave her my number, in case things ever got to be more than she could handle. I gave her our address, too." She lifted her chin, defiant, because yes, this was Anya's place first, but it was her place now too, and she could give out the address if she wanted to. 

Anya looked at her for a long moment, then pressed the intercom again. "When the door buzzes, you can open it. Up the stairs, on your left. Shoes off before you come in."

Somewhere along the line the on-and-off drizzle that had been going on all day had turned into a downpour, and when Anya opened the door, Tris stood there soaking wet and shivering. She hesitated for only a second before throwing herself into Anya's arms and starting to sob.

Raven immediately pushed herself up, grabbing her crutch so she could go to the linen closet to get her a towel. She stood there awkwardly as Anya rubbed her back, trying to get her to calm down and tell them what had happened. When Tris finally loosened her grip enough that Anya was able to gently pry her off, Raven offered the towel.

Tris sniffled and took it, rubbing at her hair and dripping clothing, which didn't seem to do much. 

"Hold on," Raven said. She limped to her bedroom and found her coziest pajamas to lend to her. "Bathroom is on your left," she said. 

"Thank you," Tris said, her lower lip still trembling, and went to go change. 

Anya went to the kitchen, because that's what Anya did when she was stressed. Raven followed her. "Are you pissed?"

"Not at you," Anya said. "You should have told me, but no, I'm not pissed at you." 

"Good," Raven said. Because if Anya _had_ been angry at her, things would have gotten ugly. Anya understood a lot of things, but growing up in a shitty home wasn't one of them. Sure, she'd been shuffled around a lot, but no matter where she'd been, she'd always felt welcome. Raven... never had. Not in her own home, anyway. 

"I'm going to make cocoa," Anya said. "Want some?"

"I'll get the marshmallows," Raven said.

By the time Tris came out of the bathroom, eyes red-rimmed and nose raw, the cocoa was ready. 

"Marshmallows or whipped cream?" Raven asked. 

"Can I have both?" Tris asked. 

"If you want," Raven said, and scooped some mini marshmallows into the mug, then covered them with a mountain of whipped cream. She added some sugar sprinkles for good measure and pushed it across the counter to where Tris stood in the too big pajamas. She fixed her own cocoa next, and Anya carried it over to the couch for her so she didn't slosh it everywhere.

"Did you hurt yourself?" Tris asked, looking at the crutch.

"No," Raven said. "I just took off my brace. I can't trust it not to develop a mind of its own without it, so I use the crutch for stability." She smiled and made room for Tris on the couch between them. 

Once she was sitting, Anya looked at her. "Do you want to tell us what happened?"

Tris stared down into her cocoa, and Raven watched her throat bob as she swallowed. "I just... couldn't take it anymore." She looked at Raven. "You said if I ever got to be too much—"

"I know," Raven said. "And I meant it." Because Tris' face was flushed from crying, and now from the warmth of being indoors again, Raven couldn't tell if there were any new marks on it, and she couldn't see any of the rest of her to see if her mother had aimed somewhere other than her face this time. "You should have called me," she said. "I would have come and gotten you instead of walking all this way in the rain." Because if she lived near the dojang, she'd walked a long damn way to get here.

Tris looked at her, then away again. "I was afraid you wouldn't," she said. "I thought that if I just showed up, you wouldn't send me away, but if I called, you might not come."

"I would have come," Raven said. "No matter what, I would have come." She leaned forward to catch Tris' eye and get her to look at her again. "Did something happen?"

"She just..." Tris swallowed again, hard. "It doesn't matter what I do, it's always wrong. Nothing I do is good enough, and she's always telling me how I need to try harder, how I'm never going to get anywhere in life, how I used to be such a good girl and she doesn't understand what happened. She's always yelling at me, and sometimes I don't even know why, or what I did to make her so angry, and then I get angry and I yell back, and..." Her breath hitched. "It wasn't always like this," she said, after taking a swallow that had to have been mostly whipped cream. "We used to get along fine. We used to do things together, go places... and now it's like ever since I grew boobs... she hates me."

Anya raised an eyebrow at that, and Tris must have noticed, because her cheeks turned a deeper shade of pink. "I mean I don't think it actually has to do with me having boobs," she said. "Just... it just seems like that's when it started. But she's still totally fine with my brother and sister. They can't do any wrong, and I can't do any right, and I'm just _sick_ of it!" Tears welled up in her eyes again, and Raven reached for the box of tissues, setting it on the table in front of her in case she needed it. 

"Does she know you're here?" Anya asked, her tone soft, but there was an edge to it. "Or did you just take off?"

Tris seemed to shrink into herself, and Raven glared past her at Anya. What did it matter? The kid was obviously upset, and she needed to not be in that house anymore. If Anya even _suggested_ that she go home...

Anya looked back at her, and her eyes said, 'Trust me,' so Raven tried to. But she didn't like the direction this seemed to be going.

"I told her that I was going to a friend's," Tris said. "She said good, because she was tired of my attitude, and I was free to stay as long as I wanted. Or as long as they could stand me." 

Raven bristled, and this time it was Anya giving her a Look. 

"Okay," Anya said, putting a hand on her back lightly. "You can stay here tonight, and tomorrow we'll figure things out, okay?"

"It won't be any better tomorrow," Tris said. "It never is. Every time I think it's getting better, every time she's nice... it never lasts."

"Okay," Anya said again. "Finish your cocoa, and then you should probably try to get some sleep. It's late, and you've had a long day." 

"You can sleep in my room," Raven said. "I just changed the sheets and everything." By 'just' she meant a week ago, but she hadn't actually slept in the bed in that week, so she figured it counted. 

Tris nodded, but didn't rush to finish. In fact, she seemed to draw it out, and Raven imagined that by the time she got to the bottom of the mug, the cocoa had to be cold. But she probably didn't want to say that actually, she wanted to stay out here with them for a while. When you were used to being told that everything you did, said, felt, thought, wanted was wrong, you learned pretty quickly to keep your mouth shut and find other ways to get your needs met.

It was almost midnight by the time she shuffled off to bed. Raven got up and stopped her, offering an arm, and Tris fitting herself against her, clinging tight for a lot longer than Raven would have expected given the fact that she was practically a stranger... but sometimes you just needed someone to hold on to... or to hold you. 

When she finally let go, Anya hugged her too. They made sure that she had enough blankets and pillows, and then wished her good night and went to their own room – Anya's room, technically, but they shared it more often than not – and shut the door.

Anya got into the bed, moving a little stiffly, and Raven wondered if she'd been entirely truthful when she'd said that she wasn't pissed. Except she'd said that she wasn't pissed _at her_ , not that she wasn't pissed at all.

Raven climbed in next to her. "You want me to shut off the lights?" she asked. 

"Not yet," Anya said. She was quiet for a long time, and then, "Can I ask you something?"

"You just did," Raven said, meaning for it to be lighthearted, but it came out flat. She was exhausted, and worried about where this was going. This felt like a tipping point, and they were teetering on the edge of the abyss. One way was solid ground, and the other was the end of everything. 

"Why does this matter so much to you?" Anya asked. "You barely know her."

Raven felt a little of the tension in her ebb. The question really was a question, not an accusation. Anya's expression, her tone, all of her was soft, open. She genuinely wanted – _needed_ – to understand what was going on in Raven's head.

And Raven probably owed her at least that much. 

"I don't need to know her," she said. "I _was_ her." She looked away, at the discarded clothing that hadn't made its way into the hamper, at the various knick-knacks and detritus that had accumulated on top of Anya's dresser, at the pictures on the walls of them, their friends, places they'd gone... and then finally back at Anya. "The details are different, maybe, if things weren't always this bad, but... maybe that actually makes it worse, if you feel like the person who is supposed to love you no matter what suddenly turned on you. My mom never wanted me. I was a nuisance, an inconvenience, except that my existence was kind of her meal ticket... when she wasn't finding a way to turn benefits into drug money."

Anya's jaw dropped slightly. "Raven," she said softly, reaching for her hand. "I'm sorry."

Raven let her take it, laced her fingers through Anya's and held on. "So I know what it's like to be told you're not good enough, that you'll never amount to anything, to be dismissed." She shook her head. "When I got older she told me that I should get Finn to knock me up because then at least he'd be stuck taking care of me, and wouldn't just move on when he found—" She stopped, fighting down the lump that formed in her throat. "Whatever. Obviously she was wrong. I'm not nothing, and I'm not nobody. I'm fucking awesome. So fuck her."

Anya slid her arm around Raven, pulling her closer, and Raven leaned into her, accepting the comfort that was offered because after Finn had turned out to be a bigger asshole than she could have imagined, she'd never expected to find anyone she felt like she could let down her guard with, that she could let in this far, who would still accept her even knowing where she'd come from. 

She felt Anya's breath on her hair as she pressed her lips to head, then murmured, "So tell me how you think this should go," she said.

"We just give her a place to escape to," Raven said. "She obviously needs one, and she's going to find one, whether it's here or somewhere else. If she doesn't, she'll implode, or explode, and both of those options end badly."

She tipped her head back to look at Anya. "At least if she's here we know she's safe, right? If she's here, we can keep an eye on her. We can make sure that she knows that she matters, that there are people who care about her. That she doesn't have to go through this alone... that she doesn't have to go through it _at all_."

Anya frowned. "I'm just worried about what would happen if her mother found out and decided to make an issue of it. It would be one thing if she was staying with a friend her own age, and that friend's parents took responsibility for her. This... isn't that."

"She told her that she was welcome to stay away as long as she liked," Raven said. 

"I know," Anya said. "I guess it's mostly a question of whether or not she really meant it."

"She's here tonight," Raven said. "Like we told her, we'll figure the rest out tomorrow."

Anya sighed, then nodded, maybe too exhausted to argue, or maybe just resigned to the fact that this wasn't something that was going to get sorted out in the middle of the night.

"I'm going to go check on her," Raven said. 

"Do you want me to come with you?" Anya asked. 

"She's just a kid," Raven said, "not a werewolf. I don't think we need safety in numbers."

"Okay," Anya said, but she got up anyway. 

Raven limped out into the hall, leaning on the wall for stability. She cracked open the door to her room, and immediately heard the sound of muffled crying. She knocked lightly before stepping in and going over to sit on the edge of the bed. 

Tris blinked at her in the dim light. "Don't make me go back," she said. "Please."

"I'm – we're not making you go anywhere," Raven said. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay, which obviously you're not. Is there anything I can do?"

Tris shook her head, but took the tissue that Raven offered her and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Raven reached past her to flip her pillow over to the dry side, then edged closer so that she could rub her back through the blankets when she laid back down. "I could recite some chemical formulas for you," she offered. "Those usually put me sleep."

Tris made a sound that was either a hiccup or a laugh, but she burrowed into the covers as Raven started rattling off the technical specs of one of her projects at work, which would just be gibberish to anyone who wasn't an engineer, keeping her voice low and soothing. After a few moments Tris closed her eyes, and a few minutes later her breathing evened out and she was finally, finally asleep.

Raven looked up and saw Anya watching them from the door. She took a few steps into the room and offered Raven a hand up, steadying her as they made their way back to their room and bed. 

"We'll make it work," Anya said, wrapping her arms around Raven and pulling her close. "Whatever it takes, we'll make it work."

* * *

That night turned into that weekend, which soon became every weekend and then began to bleed into the weekdays, too, until the days when Tris wasn't there were rarer than the days when she was, and they gave her her own key so she didn't have to rely on one of them being there to let her in. 

It wasn't official, of course, and nominally the room that Tris slept in was still Raven's. Her drafting table was still in there, but more and more of her stuff migrated into Anya's room, and Anya just shuffled her own things around to make space.

One Friday in April Tris came home after school and dumped her bag in the middle of the living room – like she always did, and like they always told her not to – and shoved an envelope at them. "My mom told me to give you this," she said. 

Anya took it and pulled the flap free; it had just been tucked in, not sealed. She pulled out a sheet of paper and her eyes went wide. She handed it to Raven, who scanned it, her eyes immediately going to the official-looking seal at the bottom. For a second she thought it was what Anya had feared – that Tris' mother had decided that they were somehow infringing on her parental rights, and now she was coming after them. But when she went back to the top of the page and read it, she realized it was pretty much the opposite.

It was a legal document – Raven wasn't sure exactly what it would be called, but something like power of attorney, she guessed – that gave her and Anya the ability to make decisions, particularly medical decisions, on Tris' behalf in the event that her mother could not be reached. 

"What is it?" Tris asked. 

Raven glanced at Anya, who shrugged one shoulder, then nodded, and Raven handed it to Tris. She stared at for a long time, and the mix of emotions that slid across her face was dizzying. Was it really possible to be angry and relieved and heartbroken and joyful and confused and disappointed all at once? 

Except Raven knew it was. It was pretty much the story of her life. 

"Oh," Tris said.

"It's only if there's an emergency and she can't be reached," Anya said. 

"I know. I guess it's probably because she's going away next week for spring break. Taking the kids to Disney."

Taking the kids. Meaning Tris' siblings. And not Tris.

"She asked if I wanted to go," Tris said, like she could read Raven's thoughts. (Raven doubted she'd managed to keep them off her face very well.) "I said no. I knew she didn't really want me to go, and us fighting all the time would just have ruined it for the kids, and I went when I was younger. I mean, so did they, but they were mostly too young to remember." Her eyes widened. "Oh shit. Is that... is it okay? If I stay here next week? I should have asked. I'm sorry. You probably—"

"Of course it's okay," Raven said, cutting her off.

Tris looked at Anya for confirmation. Anya nodded, and Raven could see that she was fighting back tears. "You don't have to ask," she said. "You don't ever have to ask."

Tris swallowed. "Are you sure? Because—"

"I'm sure," Anya said fiercely. "No matter what. No matter when. You don't have to ask. This is your home."


End file.
